I was thinking of heading to campus to work all night. I decided to be lazy. Half an hour then gunfire, 100 meters away from where I would have been.

The cast of a production of No Exit was locked down in one of the buildings.

An attempt to stress smoke found alumni friends in the centre room, including one of my favourite people ever, who never comes to the haus. Hiding out, MIT was locked down, and the driver was a little drunk.

It was someone's 21st birthday today.

I've been hiding out for almost a month, here. Much of the haus doesn't, didn't know I'm here at all. I don't know if I belong, how I belong, anymore.

Boston has gone to clusterfvck. It's spreading to Cambridge. Sirens make me edgy. There were birds outside and it was like an eerie death call. It was sitting vigil, generations of brudders in a circle, 10 years worth, police updates cycling through discussions of anime vs the manga basis. Inflatable dildos notions and plans to dress in purple fleit suits and fake-rob the treasury to make sure no one else was. The only good Mexican restaurant in Boston is in a gas station, but where?

But news vans leave parking spaces sprouting rows of satellite dishes and a section of Comonwealth's strip was clogged with them. Empty camera stands, cords and aimless producers turn sidewalks into obstacle courses. Clusters of police in neon are hanging out on street corners as pedestrians clump in intersections to stare down blocked off streets. Whiffs of ammonia and sulfur ride the wind. Spring showers came and went and splattered pavement was dry by the time I made it back home.

It feels like a disaster zone, even if all we see is the human jumble of reaction. It weighs heavy, I can't explain it. It's all the more surreal because the shops here are rich, upscale brands and window displays that are art and scream of a lifestyle so far removed from the poor college students we are. I'm so used to them I find it quaint, I live here now and I lived here 10 years ago. I'm comfortable here, this building, this section of the city and I are old friends. I open the door of our brownstone like it's home because it is, but this is a frat grandfathered in and we're not part of the world of our neighbours. It's so easy for forget.

I wonder what it feels like for them. The ones who don't see those storefronts as backdrop, but as destinations. I wonder if the city has changed for them too. If the stores feel as empty, are as empty, because we're all on the street reacting, if our collective beat has moved outside trying to remember what most of us didn't see, listening for what most of us didn't hear.

12 hours before the bombs went off I walked past that spot. Just before they exploded I decided to be lazy and not go to the store. I could have been on the spot. I wasn't. The facts don't bother me, but they're true nonetheless. 12 hours before homeless slept in doorways and loiterers ghosted walls, a couple peeling away to follow me for a block, to the corner. I wonder if that was them, keeping watch. I doubt it. But someone must have been walking past when it was going down. Just like so many made small decisions to stand here or slow down there, and were in the wrong place or anywhere else.

ETA: Most of the neon-yellow is gone. Police are kitted out in black, I saw rifles. There is camo. I think the military are here as well. I saw no women. The library is in the no-go zone, I wound up on a meandering path, and my concluding thought was annoyance: the grocery store is much harder to get to. This thought feels wrong, yet right. Life goes on. I need to eat. I have to walk, not drive.

Not to make this about me more than as a framing device and appropriately journal-like recording, but last night was a brilliant Smash and I'd finally decided to get out of my funk and venture to campus and see people and today I was noodling around before stuff... I spent a chunk of late-night early-morning wandering around the Back Bay, tracing the blocked off streets...

And bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, about an hour ago. I didn't hear it but a roommate came in and told us - she was outside at the time.

It's a couple blocks from my house, and it's bad. I was on the roof just now and there's a cop starting to route pedestrians off that side of Commonwealth. There's a static helicopter, and sirens everywhere. And pictures of blood.

I spent an hour... or more... ranting about Smash while sitting on a wall in the laundry room. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I STUPIDLY BRING IT UP AND THEN SOMEONE STUPIDLY ASKS. ... FVCK! ... So... Honestly, I was thinking about it, did an AO3/careful ff.net search (idbeinthefollies I<3U) and now plan to type up my last finished chapter/write the next instead of essays because oops, but I'm not sure I'm drunk enough (did I mention raspberry vodka? It was there in the laundry room too) - to google around for Smash spoilers which have surely proliferated. Right. So, what I'm asking is:

Is there anything worth knowing about Smash that I can know without simply depressing me? Or rather: is there any news at all that indicates Ivy will be painted in a positive or fair or at least multi-coloured light? I don't even hope for a fittingly complex Ivy/Derek scene. See how I have lowered expectations, yet failed to lower them far enough for the prospectus of yet-another OMG I IZ STAR IN RL N' KARNE SUE/MCPEE U IZ BETTR THN SLCIED BRED!!!+1

---

In other news I've done my usual and gotten myself into trouble, again, hence MIA in fandom despite not actually being horrifically busy, (though being back in school after a long while is a reasonable excuse.) But I mean trouble-trouble. As in: as much trouble as I can get without it going legal, which sort of included the threat of quasi-legal action, though for most of it I was simply upset, horrified, confused, and trying to resolve it in an adult manner, though apparently I missed because I was not dealing with an adult- I may FO post this later since now I just sound really bad, but it's more complex than that and I could have gone legal months ago *coughs* so it's limited-domain crazy...

So basically, I find myself in a quandry. I want a do-over. DR. TOM PLZ SAVE ME. I need to try this term again. Except ironically, this term has unfolded as a near-perfect do-over from a semester in high school that was very traumatizing. And so now I am merely very confused. It's perfect. Some things were better - I stood up for myself. Some things were worse - .. I stood up for myself. IDEK.

... And I don't. I'm waiting for the mediator to get back to me. That is how messed up my life gets.

I've done it for years, and even after committing to a lower, normal voice, I'm doing it AGAIN.

Except MM didn't do it all the time, we just think she did, and I really do, when I'm not being authoritative and rigorous. SPAZ iz ME!

-

Recognized by another returning student from returning student brunch. Tagged along to meeting about a support group. Wound up convincing the mental health guy that they should help us run a no-commitment student-only informal support group to use instead of or in addition to their facilitated formal committed groups. Recognized, random stuff, telling other people what to do even though they've been doing it this way for years. Yeah. That's me.

I actually would have done their group, to support others, and from my innate curiousity and need to understand and integrate. Alas, group versus half the colloqia, with their opportunity to survey the broad array of research being done even within the university? I barely had to pause on that one.

-

Also now curious about research into fandom as a supportive environment. I know I've learned more and successfully weathered tough times with many of ya'll, in ways I couldn't and didn't with people in real life. And it's not the boundary of the screen and the subsequent veneer of anonymity. It's that with the same narrative, characters, relationships etched into our souls, we have a common language already, real life mapping of emotions and situations takes place, we're searching the same ground, if for different reasons. It's what the internet does best. It's rare to find this, the right person at the right time, when you look around. When we filter through the internet, limits of geography are transgressed, and we can express what we need to express, be understood in the ways we need to be understood, and even the parts we aren't aware are there find release in the catharsis of wandering over and in all the parts of our shared fandom which we -can- recognize and appreciate.

So... Thank you, to everyone I've ever talked with, and may we talk again, no matter how much time has passed, if we're still in sync, or just have a curiousity about what we are up to and if oru lives are going well.

PreS - Oh geez, it totes slipped my mind that I've been missing TV that I do actually like. I can stay up watching Grim and W13 XP

Until classes really start and I settle in, there is actually very little fandom in my life. Er.

But here's the thing. 5 or 6 years ago, I took the first Video Game course they offered, because I'm happy to sample anything. Now? A third of the classes are video game related, and the new faculty are leaning that way. I mean, I have been working on studying Landcomms through a "video game" framework, which is cool, tons of work and language and theories to use and toy with, and it subverts expectation, but that's only good if I can get an independent study with someone in the field. The classes are too literal and there are too many hardcore gamers who have a bit of trouble with objectivity.

So here I be, trolling profs and cold-emailing. As of now, I have two friendly professors who aren't on campus this fall, but both of whom are interested in working with me in the spring or summer. When I will have graduated. I'm thinking of getting a room over the summer to work on a couple projects. Not as a UROP, but if they want me, they can hire me, and it might be swingable to pay me. Or not. But one guy is a linguistic anthropologist (who's studied the closed community of magicians) which is a little bit perfect. At this point I desperately need to do research in THIS field (I have plenty of research experience in Linguistics) to give me an edge applying for Masters or Graduate programs. And because I'm punchy and want to start doing something for real.

By and by, if anyone is interested in media and entertaiment from all angles, Futures of Entertainment 6 is happening Nov 9 and 10. It's special because they simulcast as it happens, and podcasts and transcripts are available pretty quickly and then forever. Last time I went, we trended on twitter, everyone was sharing snippets as it went. (I also have an air mattress if anyone has the urge to physically attend ;) )